


Only Meant to Fall

by softcorevulcan



Category: Angel: the Series, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Action & Romance, Angel Season 5, Auras, Character Study, Crossover, Demons, Established Relationship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, L.A., Loss of Powers, M/M, Teleporting to Another Universe, Turning human, vampire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 08:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19742086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softcorevulcan/pseuds/softcorevulcan
Summary: Six hours ago Crowley and Aziraphale were speeding down the road, going too fast in the middle of Cardiff. Then there's a sudden pop - and Crowley is waking up in a dark tunnel, with Anathema beside him, wondering what happened to his angel.Turns out they're in LA, and they don't seem to fit.





	1. Welcome to the City of Angels

**Author's Note:**

> Although technically a crossover, one needs zero knowledge of Angel the Series to understand what’s going on. The main focus is on our Good Omens dorks.
> 
> It’s long, it got away from me. The first half is a lot of character study journeying, the second half is a lot of sappy romance. So, if you wanted to particularly avoid one aspect or the other, you could just pick one section - they should mostly make sense as stand alone parts. (Last part is currently in-progress and will be added later).
> 
> Timeline wise: takes place a couple of months after the world doesn’t end in Good Omens. As far as Angel goes, takes place in late Season 5 when the group is deciding they don’t really want to work for Wolfram and Hart anymore (and might be somewhat canon divergent). Since Good Omens characters are the focus, Angel canon and characters are treated a bit more flexibly. (I just thought it’d be neat to play with ideas that another universe, particularly one I like writing in, would interact with Good Omens characters.)
> 
> If you catch a reference to something, you’re probably right, because I stuffed so many little mentions into this bad boy.
> 
> Rated Mature because of Angel: the Series typical levels of violence in the periphery, and I like to err on the side of caution with ratings.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Crowley and Anathema.

There’s nothing like it - when Aziraphale looks at him like that. Like he hung the stars and moon, all the galaxies in the sky - and Crowley can’t really remember anymore, if he did, or if Aziraphale would know if he had.

He probably looks absolutely ridiculous, full on smitten, when that gaze is leveled so adoringly in Aziraphale's complete direction. Probably looks dumbfounded. All kinds of idiotic, of embarrassing, of things he doesn’t really think a mean ol’ evil demon ought to embody.

But it’s the only response his body can ever seem to muster, at it. As his angel smiles over at him, eyes softer than the definition of love, lips stretching out in adoring smile, his angel reaching over to squeeze his shoulder companionably - and Crowley’s heart is in his throat, even though that can’t possibly be right, and Crowley feels like every sense is focused in on that magnetic spike of intimacy as Aziraphale’s fingers rest against his arm, over the fabric of a lovely black jacket he’s kept in great condition since the early 2000s of the modern era.

But all this, all this awe he’s dumbfounded and struck by, has only just barely managed to vacate fear from the premise. Crowley leans into the touch, reaches out his his own hand, his own body, and moves until he’s stood alongside Aziraphale and leaning into him with his whole self.

He’s safe - they’re safe - for the moment. Whatever brought them here, whatever nefarious business might be about, Crowley’s not letting go of Aziraphale again until they’re out of it.

Metaphorically, at least. 

Maybe physically, too, if his angel doesn’t protest too much. 

\---

Six hours ago was another story.

Six hours ago was Crowley driving through Cardiff, way too fast as-is-usual, with Aziraphale at his side looking anxiously at it all - at Crowley’s unreadable face behind the sunglasses, and at the city speeding blurrily by in what his angel might consider to be concerningly-much. It was both of them a bit out of sorts, in a car Crowley wasn’t entirely sure he liked at all yet, with Aziraphale not quite caring enough to ask how Crowley even acquired the vehicle in the first place. 

Honestly, they’d only been driving through the area because Aziraphale had ordered some ancient book, some collectable he doubtless planned to gush over, and they were still a bit anxious over the idea of any other angels or demons coming after them in unexpected-but-dangerous ways. So they planned a bit of a mini-vacation (not that most days weren’t, now at least, sort of a vacation for them - what job was there to do anymore, when their old ones had always just been to ‘thwart’ one another? And when their very last had been to help end the world, which they had most surely screwed up admirably?)

Six hours ago was them in an uncomfortable, not-quite-right automobile in the color black, racing down a street with a speed limit drastically under the reading on the car’s speedometer, toward the source Aziraphale was supposed to collect a book at, when suddenly everything went black.

And when Crowley came to, the new area he found himself in was almost as dark as the unconsciousness he’d awoken from. Underneath him had been a warm body, and the distinct reek of blood, and evil. And the absolutely vile stench of sewage trapped in air that didn’t get much of the kind of ventilation that could have perhaps otherwise lessened the unbearability of it all.

He’d stood, dizzy and unbalanced on his feet - which felt just this side of wrong, somehow - and the other body had made a sudden groan that’d startled him into the air momentarily. Before, finally, his instinct to engage won out over anything else, and he bent down to ask the - it was maybe a young woman, certainly a _human_ at least, as far as he could tell - if they were quite alright. 

“Ngh, what happened?” she remarks, as Crowley takes her hand and helps her up. And her voice is so close to something familiar that it almost irks Crowley that he can’t seem to place where he’s heard it before. She hardly sounds like she realizes he’s there - that she’s not alone muttering to herself. But that hardly makes sense, because after all, how then did she think she got pulled up?

“You don’t know how we got here, then?” 

She doesn’t jump, at least, already more adjusted to the new circumstances than he is. Maybe she’s used to these sorts of things - being teleported, or kidnapped, or miracled somewhere, or whatever it is that’s happened. “No idea,” now her hand is sliding out of his, and onto his arm, seemingly trying to figure out who it is that’s with her. She sounds American. Are they in America, then?

“Well, last thing I remember, I was in Cardiff,” he tries to be helpful. 

She’s a very animated lady - even though he can’t see her much, except for maybe a dark outline, he can feel her frazzled shrug as it radiates all the way to her tentative attempt to grab hold of his arm to ground herself. “So was I!”

He wonders sedately if she is the cause of all this, somehow.

“I was - I was picking up some things from the -” her voice trails off, and it’s like she’s still mostly talking to herself, and around that time is when Crowley picks up the echo of footsteps in the distance.

The human either hardly notices them, or just can’t grip the urgency the kind of way he can. Cause he can sense what they belong to - those deceptively gentle taps in the distance, they feel distinctly like beings of hell, and they’re definitely something to do with why there must be blood lying about _somewhere_ down here. They’ve got to be.

But more importantly, he can’t let himself get seen. It would be worse than sudden-relocating, if they recognized him. Who knows what Beezlebub, or anyone else who’s decided to hold a particular grudge recently, would feel inclined to do. And - and that would hardly do, especially with the _human_ here - what if they took it upon themselves to lash out at her too?

He’s about to start dragging her off in a rush, but bizarrely she seems inclined to twitch away from the sound of the footsteps now that they’re getting closer, too. He jerks and falls a bit more than he means to, when she steps back almost in sync with him. 

“I’m getting bad vibes,” she whispers, and it makes Crowley want to hiss in agreement. 

He doesn’t bother saying they need to get out of here, just sniffs the air trying to catch a whiff of something fresher, of some possible exit to the outside world, then starts moving. She’s quick to come right along behind him, just as urgent and quiet. And they’re like mice scurrying away from potentially prying eyes.

They move decently farther from those first steps, when Crowley feels more negative energy barreling against them, like a sudden wall of heavy badness invisible in the air that they’re stumbling right into. He stops stock still, and the woman follows, making a gasp she bites down on, almost as if she can sense it too. There’s flames dancing in the distance, around a corner, and over where it’s brighter, Crowley can see lines of blood painting the ground. Maybe, probably, leading into some more intricate design expanding in the next room. He doesn’t need to keep going this way to know it’s not going to lead to anything good.

So he turns right around, heading back - he can sense them, smell the threats, so he’ll just wiggle some kind of path around these creeps, whoever they are.

In the idle parts of his mind, Crowley wonders where Aziraphale went. He’d been in the car, before. 

The girl’s dark hair in the faintness of the flame light that reaches them, and her dark round glasses, again strike him as concerningly familiar - but not enough to really place.

She’s adaptive, and easily goes along with him, clearly smart enough to figure they’re better off together. Although, to be fair - she might be better off without him as company. At least, given his current status. Or any status, really, a demon was no place for a girl to be. 

To be with, at any rate.

The room with the flames most definitely had humans in it, Crowley thinks. But it’s not worth it to go back now. There was no goodness in that room. If anyone was a victim, they’re far past that now. Whatever remains there plans to just build this crescendo of uncomfortability. 

It’s like the Spanish Inquisition or the lords Crowley would really like to have never known existed, all over again. It’s humanity, reeking and reveling in bad-things as usual. It’s not usually a part he likes to be this viscerally close to.

Perhaps this human companion is just as put off by the painful vibes. It’s almost like she can sense them (or simply that she _really_ cannot sense that Crowley’s kind of inherently made of the same yucky energy). 

At least, hopefully, if there’s any demons down here, they won’t be able to find her out in the midst of all these more dominating presences.

Up ahead, there’s a new turn, and he takes it - though there’s most certainly a vampire that walked through that path recently - and my, aren’t there a lot of demons and creepy crawlies in this dark set of tunnels. It’s like someone threw him right back into home office - except, surely, surely they didn’t. Home office has more light, usually - that awful fluorescent glow that’s flickering and blearing uncomfortably all at once. 

Surely it’s not, and Aziraphale’s not - oh dear. 

Crowley slinks faster, and the woman beside him matches his pace, feeling just a touch frantic beside his side, like she’s just as desperate to get past this and to the ‘safety and answers’ part.

They make another turn, and there’s more light - flame torches securely anchored against the walls. Crowley pointedly tries to ignore the dried old spats of blood he’s walking over. 

His companion lets out a gasp she can’t bite down fast enough, when one of their feet steps down and makes a sudden sloshing noise. 

Instinct flicks his eyes down before he can help it, and there he finds a lovely leather boot laced up the front, jerking out of a puddle of green ooze and what is most certainly blood clotting up mixed in with it on the ground. 

He lets out a little airless gasp of his own as her spare hand shoots up to cover her mouth, and there’s quiet retching noises as she swallows down. 

Then there’s loudness, shouting, and clangs echoing through their little chunk of tunnel, and they’re both jumping to the side and leaning up against one of the walls, too shaken, thankfully, to register the mess of unpleasant fluids likely dripping behind their backs. 

A couple cult-members - maybe? Judging by the garish red blankets they’ve got themselves draped under - rush by, barely noticing them. Right after them barrels two men - probably human too? - with axes, shouting incoherently. Finally a vampire is running up, trailing the two, and Crowley’s not quite sure which victim exactly it is, that the monster is hunting. The vampire stops for a second, the first individual to pay them any mind down here, and Crowley’s way too past resisting the urge to hiss, so he does so. 

Then he yanks his companion from the wall, before the vampire can get too close to either of them, and starts down in the direction away from all the people who’ve just run. He thinks the vampire’s about to pick them out to chase instead, and he’s fully prepared to deal with that -

But the hall is suddenly filled with a large beastie, tumbling toward them with big fangs and a multitude of greenish arms with sharp pointy bits, and Crowley does a turn heel, and only manages to bring his human companion along with him because she’s managed a death grip on his arm. And so he’s pulling them both like dead weight after the men with axes, cause at least they aren’t great-big-sharp-beasties! And she’s probably wishing they couldn’t see anything again, cause she’s hardly moving her feet with all the shock - but thank goodness for that death grip, keeping her alongside him. 

The vampire is most certainly following them along - or else getting eaten - but what’s the difference, anyway.

They reach a larger open space, and there’s a ladder Crowley’s too panicked to notice, but he sure can’t look away from all the active violence he wishes he wasn’t seeing.

The monster beastie is most definitely still behind them, because the human he’s with drags him in some odd direction, shouting “Hurry!” 

Then they’re both scrambling up some semblance of stairs, the chaos falling below them, and when a creepy cult member gets it in their mind to rush toward them, Crowley magics up some hellfire and throws a ball at the bitch. 

The woman seems to have found the ladder, and she lets go of Crowley’s arm, finally, so that she can start pulling herself up it.

She’s wearing the most billowy skirt he’s seen since his last Renaissance festival, and it’s all black and wooshy trying to hit his face as he follows after her. He’s trying to ignore the grimy feeling under his fingers, and she’s probably trying to get over it too. Then again, human, so she’s probably a touch more concerned with brutally dying than he is.

Probably just a smidge, though. It’s not like dying’s very fun, after all, even if you might exist in some mild way after the fact. Especially if after the fact, you have to deal with all your ex-coworkers who are… quite displeased with you. More displeased than regular, anyway.

He doubts he’d be able to act as brazenly carefree about the whole ordeal as Aziraphale. A little too much True Fear, coming out, when it comes to that. Too much to handle hiding without his glasses, anyway, or without a corporeal body to hide in, to act in, to pretend everything’s well past hunky dory.

Yikes.

There’s squelching noises below him, and quieter but equally icky noises above him, and Crowley forgets himself for just a moment to glance down - sees the vampire rip into someone’s back, throw them into a wall; sees the two humans with axes take a hunk into the writhing beastie. When he looks away again, he can hear the thing squiggling out guttural shrieks and shouts - and maybe it’s dying, and maybe, maybe, Crowley feels a little bad for it.

What did it ever _do_ ? It never touched him, maybe it hadn’t planned to hurt anyone at all. He didn’t know it like _that_ , didn’t know it personally. Maybe it was nicer than a lot of humans, frankly. Like the kraken, or a whale. 

Crowley would bet it never invented flaying anybody alive. It’s not like it was actively drinking any blood, like that vampire down there was made to, like that one lord who owned a castle and put people’s bloody heads on spikes. It was probably the mortal cult down here that did a great deal of the bloody, horrible stuff. 

Crowley was maybe lost in a tangent. 

The woman above him had stopped climbing. She was huffing, above him, and he belatedly realized it meant she was stuck. They were stuck. 

The manhole or whatever probably wasn’t opening. 

“Oi!” He tried reaching up around her, and she kindly tried to give him some room so he could climb up, perilously teetering, next to her - he still felt kind of wrong, in his body, like something was _off_ , like there were inches missing or inches extra or like his shoes were just the wrong _ones_ \- and he pressed upward as hard as he could to try and budge it open.

The flames down below were brighter, bigger, maybe it was the fireball he threw. Maybe it was something else. 

There was shrieking - more of that awful, agonizing sound, the big sharp beastie. It might have been dying. Splattering noises down below, then yelling in what might be Latin - Crowley was a bit too rusty to identify any specific words in the chaos. 

“Can you get it open?” the woman shouted, next to his ear, trying to make herself heard over the noise of it all. 

“Gimme a sec,” he glanced down, noticed some of those dreadful people in silly red blankets moving toward the ladder, toward the woman’s boots and his own tender feet - and hurled another shuck of conjured fire down at them, a big spray of burning hot downpour. 

In the next second, the woman with him must have noticed something - maybe the fire he made out of thin air, maybe something else. But he was too busy twisting one set of free fingers in some bizarre manner to convince the bolts to undo and pop off so the bastard lid to this wannabe hellscape would blast off. His other arm was busy clutching the ladder like his life depended on it - certainly his barest sliver of peace of mind did - and using the attached arm to try and press against the human and keep her anchored with him so she didn’t accidentally fall down and hurt herself - or get herself hurt. 

He couldn’t have known, that she had locked eyes with the vampire, and stared in wild bewilderment and awe at his big toothy fangs. Crowley was not aware she had noticed the vampire staring up at Crowley with that same sort of expression, in wonder and confusion at a demon trying to crawl on up out of here. 

Crowley had not an inkling that it mattered if another one of hell’s creatures recognized a familiarity in him. He was too busy containing the bubbling up fury that it _shouldn’t be this hard for him to open up a manhole_. He was too busy trying not to scream at the metal to twist faster, and some not-small bit of anxiety in him was worrying that this was all too much too like other things he hadn’t much liked experiencing, and oh god oh dear what if Aziraphale’s lost somewhere in this maze too, and Crowley just can’t find him, can’t sense him, because the stench of all the evil around here is just too potent, and -

And finally the metal lid trapping them here flies sky high like a leaf blown up by a tornado, then the woman lost in this place with him is wobbling and shouting, and he grabs hold of her quite suddenly as she latches her arms around his neck like a child scrambling to get above water after thrown in a lake by her dad. 

He can feel his glasses teetering, and tilts his head back to get them to slide more firmly back on. Then he’s leaning off his side of the edge of the ladder, and nodding politely to let the woman go up first.

There’s sunlight shooting straight down where the hole’s been blown open, and the vampire jumps away - Crowley doesn’t know it, but the creature had rushed forward when the woman had almost fallen, and who knows why - but Crowley throws down one more hot wall of fire, just to be on the safe side, to keep anyone else uncouth from following them on up.

Vampires, he thinks, can’t cross fire. Or maybe, they catch fire? Well, humans certainly do. It’s worth trying. 

There’s, of course, a few other humans down there. But they’ve all got axes, or daggers, or their own fiery torches, and they don’t seem very nice. They did kill that wriggly beastie - and a few of each other, by the last glance down at them. Best to keep them a fair distance away. 

There’s also some line, about vampires not being able to cross running water? But Crowley can’t remember the specifics, and anyway, it’s a tough job, miracling in a running stream out of nowhere. And for some damn reason, making quick work of anything seems to be absolutely, agonizingly, _difficult_ right now. Much harder than it ought to be.

Crowley should’ve been able to push the cover of the tunnel open with the press of a pinky or something. It shouldn’t have taken so much _effort_. So much concentration. And the amount of stress he was bubbling up over the cacophony of this whole situation - completely more than ought to be happening.

When the woman got up into the light of the day above, her feet on solid ground, she reached down and was happy to help Crowley on the rest of his way out. Then she stared at him a moment, as if something was running through her mind (something was in fact, it was: ‘my, doesn’t he look familiar, but from where? I feel like I ought to know’). 

“Run?” she suggested, casual.

“Good plan,” he agreed, and took off, perfectly content to follow the path she picked for them.

She led the way, noticing with curiosity that they were probably in America, right now. It worried her a bit, in a passive sort of way, that her passport and wallet and ID were almost surely still across the Atlantic. Along with her purse (unless someone stole it). Also, the absent thought kept nagging her, aggravating like a scab that keeps getting pulled open every time one accidentally re-scrapes it on the surface of objects throughout the day - that she really _ought_ to know who this man, her current companion, _was_. 

He looked so aggravatingly familiar, when she glanced back at him, in between deciding where to go, where to head. His black sunglasses, the rocker wannabe kind of vibe - overdone way of moving, like his legs were too big or his leather pants demanded he pretend to be a professional rockstar (that had never actually been critiqued on this performance, or even told what it looked like from an outsider point of view). The kind of absent scowl, near carefree set to the face - that was clearly worrying about something, a lot like Anathema herself - always concerned with something or other, but trying what she felt was a quite successful play at casualness. Did she look as overdone as this man, when she thought she was depicting composure so convincingly? That’s a worrying thought in itself.

They stopped running, finally - in between several rather stupidly long stops to breathe like dying banshees - at a Starbucks on a corner covered in concrete. Anathema wondered if they were in California. 

Her companion seemed preoccupied - and maybe, that’s how she often appeared to others as well. But he followed her amicably enough into the shop as she ordered, and let her get him a coffee so he wouldn’t be left out.

When it was time to pay the bill, she was re-reminded that her wallet was missing in action - but the strangely familiar man seemed to figure that out after an awkward drawn out moment of her and the cashier staring at one another as the tension rose. 

He reached into his own black jacket - probably far too hot in this weather, this climate, just like her own presently wool one - and he pulled out a black wallet that suitably matched the rest of his coordinated look. “On me,” he muttered, looking not at her probably, but she couldn’t be sure where exactly because of the shade of the glasses, then he handed over a credit card with some adorable animals printed on it. She could make out a Great Dane spotted like a dalmatian in the center, and a parrot and snake on one of the sides. 

The cashier ran the card, handed it back, then Anathema led the way over to a booth by a window. So that she could look out, and monitor for any sign of left over creeps from the tunnels they’d woken up in.

The tunnels had felt so - ominous. So heavy. Foreboding. She’d sensed plenty of auras down there, and none of them really nice. This man, he felt… a bit off, too. 

But compared to down there, his energy was a welcome change. As perhaps, murky, as it seemed, it was also pretty calm. A comparison could be drawn, perhaps, to the stillness of a quiet pond in a witches swamp. Not really a problem, exactly, as long as you didn’t plan to pick a fight with the creatures that swam underneath the surface. 

Not that she had any idea of if he’d be a problem. Maybe he’s who brought them here, after all. She was about to ask more about that. After all, there was no point in avoiding the topic altogether.

He’d woken up on top of her - she presumed, if he’d been unconscious at all - if this had to do with magic, surely he couldn’t think she was any more bizarre for bringing it up, than the circumstances they’d seen today had already been.

He looked preoccupied. But it was hard to tell, what with the glasses. And the way he was kind of slouching, so his hair fell around him like those red cloaks had fallen around the faces of the weirdos in the tunnels.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that this strangely-familiar man had shot fire out of his fingertips (as far as she could tell). Surely, magic, was not going to be the thing that put him over the edge of ‘uncomprehending.’

It did concern her a bit, that his vibe was so heavy. He didn’t feel much different than the creatures and people down in the tunnels. 

But, he’d helped her. That counted for something.

“I’m Anathema,” she started, not yet decided on how to continue.

She sipped her drink as she waited for him.

She’d be waiting a long time.

Crowley was preoccupied. Very preoccupied. 

At the moment, he was trying very hard to reach out with his senses, and see if he could feel or smell or do ANYTHING that might give him a hint of where Aziraphale’d gone to. Of if he was alright. 

It was really well past aggravating him, that all he could pick up that seemed even mildly familiar, was her - this perfectly ordinary, perfectly not-his-angel, sitting across from him in this dingy corporate hovel of an establishment. 

He might have thought he looked perturbed, if he’d been bothered to have been asked, and to have self-reflected enough to consider answering honestly. But really, he just looked a bit still. And mostly, just distracted.

The woman across from him coughed. He was too preoccupied to remember to wonder if she was choking. 

Then the woman’s leg kicked out - nudging one of his legs into a different spot - and she practically bounced for a moment where she sat. “You’re the one that hit me with your car!”

‘Oh,’ Crowley thought, his brain coming back to his present circumstances for a moment. It was too tempting to his brain, to come back to a trail that’d been unknown, piecing itself back to something resembling knowledge. “OH.”

She seemed to expect more from him - or maybe, she didn’t. Crowley didn’t hang out with humans much. He hung out with Jesus a fair bit - but to be fair, the guy had been pretty straightforward about things, and had kindly spelled it out when Crowley had been off in a tangential plane of relation. One couldn’t expect every human to be as good at handling - well, a lot of things.

He wasn’t very good at reading people back, to be fair. Maybe. Maybe he was - he didn’t know, he didn’t think about it much. Besides, for a lot of his life things were probably easier when humans _did_ misunderstand him. Then it wasn’t really anyone’s _particular_ fault if they were tempted to do something bad, something awful, something neither he nor they had managed to really trifle out as any particular thing… life was better, sometimes, in the grey areas of confusion, rather than absolutes.

At least the grey areas had love, had passion, had - had a great deal lot of things Crowley liked. Had _human_ things. 

Where in the fuck was Aziraphale?

His mind came back to the present circumstances, for a short instant. “You were at the apocalypse!”

The woman nodded, a quick bounce as she did. She seemed about to say something, but his words just kind of kept coming, while they had the chance of him being aware in the moment.

“You did something to stop it, yeah?”

What might’ve been confusion crossed her face, as it contorted and squished at her lips and forehead. He didn’t know, exactly, how Adam Young had affected everyone else’s experiences of That Day.

Who knows what it had done to humans. 

He knows that whatever’s going on, right now though, it’s really irking him. His brain’s all foggy and heavy, and he can still feel the tired ache of waking up from being knocked out as if by force - but he _shouldn’t_ be feeling it. He should be able to magic it right away, and feel fresh as rain - at least physically - just like he always does, always can. But it’s like the kick of a hangover and its holding on for dear life, and he can’t seem to compel it to shake off of him. 

His stomach feels a touch upset with the black coffee he’s been gulping, that the human picked out for him. Crowley keeps compelling his tummy to settle, and yet - here it is, being defiant, aching a touch, being _upset_. He wants to yell at it, then he wants to Yell At Himself, because Really, A Thought Alone should be Dissipating this feeling. 

A thought isn’t cutting it though. Not even a full moment of concentration is.

The woman stops looking confused over her own thoughts, and instead is just taking in the sullen frown of consternation facing back at her. 

Did he - did he not want her to fix the apocalypse? Didn’t she… she vaguely remembers she must have helped save the world, although the details get foggier whenever she tries to remember those precise particulars of _how_. 

Ever the kind of person to push through awkwardness for the sake of getting things done, she huffs out a curt “Yes,” then follows along with, “Do you feel like we’re in the wrong universe?”

Because, well, someone ought to say it. 

A mirror of her earlier stir into action, he pulls himself up with a sort of wriggle, then leans forward like a jump, “You feel it too?”

His voice is urgent.

“Yeah, the vibe’s -”

“All wrong,” he finishes, and she can’t see his eyes, but she feels like he _gets_ it. 

“This whole place feels different, like we’re out of place, I thought it was odd - like maybe I was -”

“Yeah, second I woke up, my body felt all wrong, like I didn’t fit, but I couldn’t figure why -”

“But this whole place is just full of auras that don’t feel like they ‘click,’ if you know what I mean?”

The man - who she really needs to ask the name for, at some point - nods in rapt agreement with her conclusions.

“I think, maybe, that’s why I didn’t recognize you!” she continues, leaning forward too - although they’re both speaking far louder than they think they are, and no amount of conspiratorial secret turns are going to keep the fellow patrons who’ve already glanced at them concernedly from forgetting the two of them are there. “You don’t even feel the same!”

Crowley almost says ‘yeah,’ again, because it feels right, and she _gets_ it. But also, that final conclusion kind of twists his stomach and stops him in his metaphorical tracks. “What do you mean I don’t?” 

He forgets to wonder what it is she means by he ‘felt like’ the last few times they crossed paths, whatever the hell she means by that. 

“I mean - I mean.” What does she mean. How can she explain. She tilts her head and looks at him thoroughly, trying to place exactly what it is that’s so incongruent.

He’s still dressed, well, like she remembers. He still feels, well - to be frank - like a big opaque cloud of muggy darkness wrapped up in a person shape. Doesn’t exactly, well, have an aura like a person usually ought to -

Except - 

Except that’s it! That’s the issue! At least, one of the issues that’s throwing her sense of things being usual off. He’s got what kind of feels like a person kind of aura. Sort of like something resembling an ordinary aura. 

Like he’s a person.

Anathema’s not quite sure if he’s a person, or not. It seems kind of rude to just ask that, although she’d suddenly like to. She just supposed he was. Back when he hit her with a car. Then, in that foggy memory that just gets blurrier the more she tries to hone in on it - she feels justified in the notion, that him and his rather talkative companion, had seemed just as… not exactly from this earth… as the people shaped horsemen and the almost incomprehensible void of - was it Death? - and the… well. And whatever had showed up for Adam when those other things had no longer been an issue. 

Whatever this man and his companion had been - they’d felt just as blearily hard for her to pinpoint now, to remember or grasp precisely now, as any of those other… impossible-to-name-now things she is quite certain must have been present, must have… happened.

Now, this man didn’t feel so hard to conceptualize as those things. He felt kind of, reachable. Like Adam. Like a person.

Well that was going to be hard to explain. 

He surely must be staring through those shades. 

“You seem sort of, well, human?” She probably sounds completely incomprehensible. Of course he would seem like that, I mean, it’s what presumably… he is supposed to seem like? Based on appearances alone, anyway.

But he leans back like she hit him across the face with an anvil, after a few solid moments of sitting there, frozen and still. Once he’s pressed himself back into the plastic squish of the booth seat, his body resettles into something very still. Into someone who looks very aged, and tired, and somehow has managed to still be surprised, although they’re concealing it well.

She notes to herself, oddly enough, that the man actually doesn’t seem to have many wrinkles at all, as she looks across at him. That seems off, somehow, too. 

But she just can’t pinpoint most of her memories that feature him in them - all the ones of That Day are impossible to really grasp. And when he hit her in the dark, it was, well, dark. And then when she’d had time to get over the weirdness of it all, she’d been behind him, just staring at him and that other man bickering like a couple that's been married forever and would continue to be married another eon at least. 

Then she’d been a bit preoccupied with her bike, that clearly had been the subject of some kind of magic or witchcraft or otherwise unnatural doing. No matter what the soft guy had said about it being nothing. 

The man across from her didn’t look like he was breathing.

After another few moments, he gasped, apparently out of actual need - then coughed once the gasping was over with. In the silence that followed, the man picked up his coffee and took another sullen gulp, then seemed to contemplate coughing again.

“I uh, I’m sorry if that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“It doesn’t.” The way he says it, almost sounds like he’s berating. 

Like her mother, when she was little, and kept on with her annoying phase, and kept insisting ‘oh! But what if that doesn’t happen! Because I just don’t do it!’ to her mother’s tired responses of ‘Well, Agnes probably knows if you won’t, so she’ll still be right about whatever it turns out.’ Until Anathema would really start pushing it, and insist ‘Well then, I don’t see why I gotta follow the book at all, I don’t need advice -’ to the point where her mother, as sweet and kind as she was, would finally snap. 

Would snap and tell Anathema that she was getting too old for such an attitude, that she was too smart to be the type to throw a prophecy away instead of taking help when it’s offered, and that as set as Agnes’ future was, it was still up to Anathema to take care of the future so that there would be _one_. Because, after eleven years, who knows if there would be, and did Anathema really want to risk it all just to be a little brat? 

And that would usually get Anathema to tears. Not in front of her mother - because really, she was too old for it, and she didn’t let her mom know how much it all got to her. How much responsibility for the world made her kind of wish she wasn’t a part of it, at times. 

So, when she hears that tone of voice, there’s a small part inside of her that always goes back to those times. That tells her she’s being silly, and unwise, and that the world can’t afford that from her.

In a way, she’s really glad she burned that other book. The pages that came after. 

In a funny sort of way, she supposes, she must seem a little odd. To be so calm and bubbly, when this man is clearly grinding his gears over the whole being-in-the-wrong-world deal. For him, apparently, it must be somewhat upsetting.

But for her? As off putting as all of the vibes of things feel - like everything’s been moved off by a few inches, or has a few too little atoms to be completely like the things she remembers - it doesn’t seem like a disaster in any sense of the word. It’s kind of fascinating. 

She wouldn’t mind staying in another world, another version of it, for a while. Maybe forever. 

If she doesn’t have a destiny here, then certainly, it can’t be that bad either way. Probably. 

Now the man is snatching something from inside his pocket - a cell phone - and flipping it open rather harshly. Beating down on the buttons in a barely-restrained sort of way, but Anathema can tell he’s got the inner rage of a customer service rep right now that would love nothing more than to shout violently at the world. “Aziraphale, Aziraphale, pick up.” 

Anathema hears, barely, the noise of a call not going through. 

She expects the man to huff - he seems upset enough to - but he just glances down and taps some more buttons in that restrained-pressure way, probably trying to keep it together long enough to not break anything. If the phone’s barely working now, it’ll work even less if it’s smashed in.

He wriggles his fingers around it then, almost like he’s pretending it’s a flute, or some toddler toy where you press shapes into holes - except there’s no shapes, no holes, and he’s pressing in on thin air. Finally, he does let out a huff that comes out as a quiet hiss, when his wriggling fingers get him nowhere.

“Why isn’t it -” 

“No service?” she tries, helpfully, pulling out her own phone, which was thankfully stored in her coat and not her bag - which is presumably still somewhere in Cardiff in the universe she disappeared quite suddenly from. 

But when she tries to use her own phone, there is no plan. She tries to dial her mother, since the number should work - but she gets that same non-working result. Her wi-fi, at least, is fully functional when she connects to the Starbucks network. This universe has the same basic phone structure, then, probably. It’s just, there is clearly no Anathema Device here, with her same number, with her same exact phone. 

She starts to explain - because, although his wrinkles seem about as non-existent as hers, she could have sworn he seemed to be middle aged when they last met, at least his husband clearly seemed to be - that the man could use the internet connection to maybe call with skype or something. 

He either isn’t listening, or doesn’t understand a single thing she’s saying to him.

He just keeps twisting his fingers around his own phone (in a black case, of course) like he’s tying and untying an intricate invisible knot. His brows are furled up and tense as he hunches over the thing like he’s handling a bomb. 

Anathema decides she might as well finish her own coffee, and notes his hand movements curiously so that she can reference it later in her memory. Perhaps this is some kind of spell casting she isn’t familiar with - it’s as decent a guess as anything, and she’s always up to learn a new skill. 

He hisses out again, and a trio of friends sitting in the booth behind him exchange glances at it, while pretending they don’t notice Anathema noticing them. 

“Finally,” he’s dialing again, putting the phone to his ear. “Please pick up. Please let yours be working, you bastard.” 

Is that what Anathema sounds like, when she’s talking to herself? She can’t tell if the bastard is meant to be the phone, or the person trying to be reached.

The familiar noise of a phone going to answering machine just barely reaches her ear, and the man in black arches himself up like he’d like nothing more than to strike at something - perhaps the phone, or maybe God himself - poised like a very grumpy viper, presumably glaring at the air above them. 

As soon as she hears a beep, the man hangs up and proceeds to attempt to call the number again, at least five times. 

Each time seems to break him down a little, a smidgen, barely perceptible in the moment, but by the time he’s gotten to his last try, he’s slouched and his head is barely clearing the top of the table. “Please pick up Aziraphale, something’s happened,” he mumbles into the phone, then dials again.

Like a spell, the calls seem to sap his energy and he keeps getting closer and closer to the physical embodiment of a puddle.

Maybe it is exactly that. An actual spell, actually draining the man. Presumably, he doesn’t have service, just like she doesn’t. So he’s somehow making that phone manage the calls. 

Eventually he has, in fact, slid to the floor. The cashier is blatantly giving them directed looks, probably wondering if they get paid enough to bother going over and asking if he’s alright, or to ask them to maybe carry on to their next destination now. 

Anathema is cool with being temporarily displaced into another universe, but a potential conflict with a stranger sounds a bit like too much unnecessary stress for her right now. So she gets up and sits down by the man, gently getting a grip of the arm closer to her. 

He looks up, then, and she can hear that the phone is ringing and making yet another attempted call. “I think maybe we should go,” she says, gentle.

To his credit, he seems to shake himself out of whatever state he’s fallen to, and gets up curtly after her, repressing anything but careful trailing behind her. When they get outside, he pockets his phone (after a long moment of holding it heavily in his hand and looking down at it).

“How do you think we got here?”

She assumes she’s meeting his eyes. “Did you have anything to do with it?”

“Don’t think so - I was just driving through Cardiff, with - and then I heard a loud pop, and everything went dark. Woke up here with you, about a moment before you woke up too.” 

“Ahh,” she nods, but a part of her kind of thinks its unwise to rule out the theory he might still in some way be responsible. “Well - we know we’re probably in the wrong universe.”

He nods severely. “I’m certain we are.”

“If we can find the right kind of shop, I can do something about that.”

He tilts his head as she looks something up on the wi-fi connection she’s still got, then she pulls up a map and screenshots it, along with the directions. 

“If we get some supplies, I could make an amulet that signals when something else from where we’re from is around. It could help us find whatever brought us here - since I’m guessing they’ll have at least some trace of our world still hanging onto them, if they interacted with it.” Anathema is already heading toward the first place that looked promising - Triple Goddess is what Google had listed, and that seemed a witchy enough place to start. “Well, they, or whatever force brought us here. It should show up if I make something that will lead us towards things with the same energy as us - that is, things that fit with our universe, instead of this one.”

She knew was rambling, but he didn’t seem to mind - she really ought to ask his name, she couldn’t remember if she was supposed to have already known it before though. 

Usually when people hear Anathema starting up on a rant, they vacate faster than she really thinks people ought to normally be able to. But Adam hadn’t minded her ranting one bit. He was a sweet kid, really. Most people weren’t like that, with her.

But for some reason, this man had suddenly started strutting off after her with all the veracity of Adam enamored by her elaborations. Whatever force or concept had sapped his strength, he was reinvigorated and seemed just as eager for Anathema to get to work.

“If anyone came here with us, it’ll find it?”

“Exactly,” she grinned, feeling positively filled with sunshine. A brand new adventure, with no written lines or roles to follow, just all the magic of the world at her disposal should she manage to tap into it, just the great unknown of a curious mystery. They’re off to discover the culprit of their sudden transport!

The potentiality of possible malicious motivations for such a summoning of her being, did not actually cross her mind until much later. At that moment, that sunny afternoon in what was most certainly the southern part of the state of California, she could only bubble over with the joy of feeling so out of place as to know she could do nothing that would or would not affect any possible destiny. And if she could, then it was a mighty bizarre destiny to have considered the ramifications of her existence even so far from home. 

She rather felt like Dorothy in Oz. Both in wonder of all the colors, and her inner adult biting at the back of her heels, in the pessimistic instinct that badness must be lurking somewhere out here past the guise of all these otherworldly wonders. 

That perhaps they’ve landed on a witch in the tumultuous fall of their house, without even knowing - and the being they’ve stumbled against might not exactly be kind. 


	2. Aziraphale's Evil, Bad, No Good Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale was having quite the opposite of a pleasant time. 

Despite setting the intention this morning, of quite against any ill luck or factors, planning to have A Good Day. When he awoke and realized their hotel had nothing but stale toast, he had attempted not to let it get him down. Although, the sobering reality of the stiff hotel bed had been an uncomfortable shift from the tipsy and drunken night before, where everything had been hazy and pleasant and warm, and Crowley - he thinks - had been in his arms. 

He had woken up without Crowley in them, and when he’d gotten up to find the demon, Crowley hadn’t been in the bathroom either. Although, a leaky faucet had been dripping unpleasantly, unnervingly, and Aziraphale had tried very pointedly not to get cross over the fact that the offending failure of plumbing had most certainly been the thing to wake him from his pleasant dreams.

He rarely slept - Crowley really was the one who truly appreciated a good slumber - but Aziraphale didn’t really want to consider the possibility that it could have been Crowley slipping out of his arms, and the door shutting harshly behind his potential exit from said room, that might have stirred Aziraphale to alertness.

So, it was simply an evil broken faucet.

And then, an evil, bad, no good, continental breakfast. And if, perhaps, some of the food might have been salvagably decent, and maybe only actually tasted horrible because Aziraphale felt as if it were all ash in his dry mouth as he scanned the open hall hopelessly for Crowley’s easily spottable body to no avail, well then. It was just better to blame it on the food, and the underwhelming hotel, and the fact he was alone - rather than immediately focusing in on the main point of concern.

Which was of course, that Crowley was not where Aziraphale had expected him to be. And then, _and then_ , Crowley had the audacity to come pick Aziraphale up an hour later in an absolutely despicable car.

“Why the long face?”

Crowley had rolled the shaded window down, one hand thrown casually to rest on the door, as Aziraphale lobbed a rather aggressive frown he was actually not completely aware he was wearing. He’d been kind of aware, but, he truly couldn’t grasp how absolutely encompassing the entire mood was to onlookers. 

“I’ve been wondering where you’ve been for hours!” Well, technically, only one, but it had felt an eternity longer.

“I thought I’d let you sleep in, figured you didn’t like the whole car-shopping much.” Then Crowley was leaning over, so he could open the exquisitely new, intensely too pretentious, shining black door from the inside. Presumably he expected Aziraphale to get in. 

The car was, expectedly, black. But everything else was ghastly. It reminded Aziraphale of heaven.

All sleek and modern and minimalist, far too luxurious but in all the wrong ways. All of the detached, unpleasant, dehumanizing ways. Where was the old car smell, the antiquity of it? Where was the character, the individuality - the car hardly looked like something Crowley would have willingly _chose_ , surely.

“I know,” Crowley answered, as soon as Aziraphale closed his door in a rather prickly fashion, already accelerating at far too fast a pace. “I’m not settled on it, just short notice. Until we’ve got the time to find a better car.”

Aziraphale cut himself off before he said something rather regretful, because his brain got caught in the word ‘we’ and was suddenly short circuiting on the possibility of what that might mean. That Crowley thought of a thing he finds precious, a past time he enjoys, and thought the natural expression of it would include Aziraphale. 

It almost made Aziraphale’s day turn right around and back into wonderful, despite it all.

So he’d instead bit back whatever critique had bubbled away anyhow, and started gushing about the treasure they were in town for. 

“You’d like Indiana Jones,” Crowley had said, the city whooshing by in an alarming amount of blurriness out the window beside him.

“Who’s that?” Aziraphale wasn’t going to let the speed ruin his good day, and so he’d wriggled and stretched his fingers, glancing down at the recent manicure to distract from the blurry buildings, then lobbed his gaze back at Crowley in curiosity. It was easier to ignore the city, with Crowley smiling the way he was. He looked carefree. 

He looked lovely. 

“He’s from movies. We’ll have to watch them some time.” Aziraphale’s heart was abuzz anew, each time Crowley said ‘we.’ Although, he supposed at some point, his racing pulse would simply have to get used to it. After all, they were on their side, now. 

They were, almost as if they’d always been, a ‘we.’ Except now, there were no artificial boundaries and rules and expectations getting in the way. All that could go wrong, had. Disappointments all around. 

And they’d come out of it with the most important thing. 

“We’ll have to.” Aziraphale smiled back, and idly wondered if it would be too dangerous to reach out and maybe touch one of Crowley’s hands. Just for a moment, maybe.

Then something very loud had made Aziraphale’s head ring, worse than anything, and everything had gone black. 

Aziraphale wakes up, thoroughly upset, and his head’s splitting like the minor hangover from the night before has been reinvigorated and strengthened along with full on combined with a brick or something hitting his skull.

He wakes up to darkness, then after several moments of unpleasant squirming and then eventually panicked thrashing, realizes he’s blindfolded and tied up. That’s why he can’t seem to move rather much.

It smells wet, wherever he is, like a basement cellar that isn’t anywhere close to finished, or a riverbank right after rain. A horrible image crosses his mind, of himself out in the night, his body lying by some river, bound to something heavy, and some menace he can’t identify rolling him into the depths deeper and deeper.

And he sinks, because there’s something omnipresently heavy around him in this scene. He sinks and sinks, down and down. The water tastes awful going down his lungs, and his stupid body gasps and gulps some of it down as he tries to shout out for help.

Then he’s at the bottom, mildly concerned no one will ever find him. Doubly concerned his body will react by breaking down, eventually, and that’s worse than any large uncomfortability of experiencing it. It’s so much worse than simply being conscious for decomposition. Because a body disappearing just means he’ll get dragged entire-being back to wherever it is he’s _really_ supposed to be. 

And, to be fair, he’s not quite sure if that’s even heaven anymore. After what he’s done, and been caught doing for far too long. But wherever it might be, surely Crowley would not be present - nor would Aziraphale wish for the horror of him to be, Aziraphale would rather he was safe somewhere else, somewhere on Earth. 

Crowley _better_ be safe, wherever he is now. 

The demon is self destructive and idiotic, with hardly an iota of self preservation instinct - unless its finally come to the End of Times, quite literally - all laid on top of the most terrific hero complex. Surely, Crowley would delight nothing more, than to humor coming to save Aziraphale now. Than to lean down - after appearing from seemingly nowhere - and say quite lovely and intimately into Aziraphale’s ear, “My, my, angel, what are you doing all tied up down here?” 

And Aziraphale, damn himself, would sigh an unsuppressable gasp of relief, of joy, and breath out Crowley’s name like an answered prayer. 

Surely, then, Crowley would lean down in that lovely way he does, and if Aziraphale’s lucky Crowley would unbound him with his physical touch - so that Aziraphale could savor the excitement of it a little - instead of just miracling the binds away. Then Crowley might help him to stand, a soft hand against Aziraphale’s forearm guiding him up. Finally, Crowley might reach forward, and slender fingers all warm with life would slip in between the silken fabric of the blindfold and Aziraphale’s face. Crowley would gently tug, and push the fabric away, and his visage would appear like a sign from goodness itself to Aziraphale’s eyes, inches from his face, and they’d both smile a bit irrepressibly.

A bit helplessly.

But, Crowley was not here - not yet, at any rate. It smelled of mud and death.

The fear of this being one long con to drop his body into the bottom of watery depths rejuvenated. 

It was not, apparently, entirely unwarranted. For when a hand did reach out to touch him, it was foreign, alien, and most certainly not Crowley.

“Let me go! Let me -” Aziraphale fully intended to be a nuisance to the greatest extent that he was capable, and yet when he tried to will any nearby cars to suddenly explode in a way that would shoot them to the sky, nothing happened.

Oh, but there was a car, all right, and Aziraphale felt unpleasant hands yanking him up and hurling him against the back of one, heard the sound of a trunk opening. Someone hit him rather rudely in the head when he threw open his mouth to shout some more.

He tried swinging out, aimlessly, with his limbs, but the binds were awfully tight. And for some reason his agonizing insistence that the ropes discorporate, was having no apparent effect. “Whoever you are, I’ll -”

Whatever he would do, or threaten to do, he didn’t get the chance. Some absolute freak _bit_ him on the lips in the middle of that sentence. In the momentary shock of it all, someone - or maybe the same person, who knows - lugged at his body (which felt oddly lighter than he thought it ought to, he was not normally the easiest person to physically move) and Aziraphale felt himself falling into the thin carpeting of a car trunk. Then heard the top of it slamming shut, just as he lifted his head enough for it to get smacked back downward on the closing.

“What the fuck is going on?!” 

He tried kicking out, full bodied jerks, and it was definitely hitting something, so he kept right on hitting. Whoever was guiding the vehicle turned on the radio and cranked the noise quite high - some stupid greatest hits alternative rock station that was playing not necessarily the best songs of the eras, just the most easily remembered because they’d overplayed on the radio for decades now - and any further shouts or threats Aziraphale made never managed to find their way to anyone’s ears.

This was not good at all.

\---

About the time they get to the comic-book-witchcraft store tri-brid, the vampire from the tunnels catches up to them. Quite creative, he must’ve been, to manage to get into the store even though it’s broad daylight outside the windows. 

Anathema was hurriedly gathering things up, with the kind of intensity that only someone wholly honed in on a single mission can really muster. She went up to the empty counter and ringed the bell after a moment of hesitance, bouncing marginally on her feet probably in some attempt to placate the overflowing of energy she seemed to presently be running on. Crowley had stepped up behind her when the store clerk had come up. The clerk moved mildly and unconcerned with anything but her own time, which customers appeared to have zero influence on.

Crowley whipped out his credit card once everything rang up, impatient to get it charged and get a move on. He could smell the vampire milling about in the back of the store, getting closer, and perhaps two humans with him?

Crowley didn’t want to find out if the vampire was craving a witch like Anathema. The credit card went through - Crowley had found that it had failed at Starbucks, until he’d willed, very hard, for the card to suddenly have an existing account with 1000 dollars in it. The supplies cost 285 dollars, the clerk had said.

So, then, he supposed he had money until that amount went up to 1000. That would take a while, surely.

Anathema clearly had no idea a monster was headed their way, and so he lightly touched her arm to try and steer her toward the exit. The very sunny, radiantly bright, summer beckoning them outside. The very anti-vampire exit.

She was already opening up the containers she’d bought, ripping one of the herbs into smaller manageable pieces (since they were leaves, not already ground up), and juggling a bottle that looked a bit like an empty perfume holder in the bend of her elbow. 

Maybe, for all her ability to ‘sense’ things, a vampire just wasn’t extreme enough for her to pick up. To be fair to her, the whole store kind of had an odd myriad of imprints though.

Crowley could tell that at some point, some absolute sicko must have wandered in here, either a demon or a really twisted up ordinary person - and a witch planning a big old massacre on a widespread scale (which must not have panned out, since the city looked pretty much fine as far as Crowley could tell). He could also tell a frequent Catholic church goer had been inside the vicinity, with holy water, multiple times. And that they had tried to consecrate one room behind one door, because it had stung ominously at the edges of his feet when he’d wandered too near.

What a lively city this place was, for all manner of supernatural things. He could also vaguely tell that another demon - surprisingly like him - had meandered in on some recent occasion. Because the residue didn’t really feel ‘evil’ so much as ‘just vaguely hell in origin,’ and came alongside the distinct impression of having been around perfectly good-natured kittens. Very snake-in-eden sort of vibes, but less grand and biblical. Just curious, just passing by, nothing particularly menacing.

“It’s them,” Crowley hears a mildly British voice saying.

Anathema is too busy walking out the door he’s opened for her, and he hastily follows her out.

“Hey, wait -” says another voice, American. 

The door falls behind them, and when it opens again, they’ve made it around the block at least.

The young woman is flitting between things in her hands, shoving some of the items into Crowley’s - one of which feels like it’s been blessed, and it gives him an unexpected shiver as he juggles to hold it.

She pulls a pretty rock on a long gold chain from under her shirt, and then she’s pouring one of the concoctions she’s made up in that perfume-looking bottle onto it. “This is going to work?”

It’s in a demon’s nature to doubt after all. This doesn’t look very professional, as she tugs a leaf off with her teeth and then presses it on top of the stone.

They’ve stopped moving, because Anathema’s motions have grown too complex. She’s handling him the bottle now, which for some reason reminds him of a live grenade. Some words come out of her mouth, and all he really catches is that it sounds like quite a silly rhyme, and very dated.

Older kind of English, he’d say, if someone asked him to guess. 

It doesn’t seem like anything very special. Just kind of weird. Like little girls playing in the mud and sticks and flowers, mushing stuff together and whispering sacred nonsense. But the stone - which was a mild, but pretty enough, shade of pale rose - suddenly changes to a glowing red. 

Crowley can see the brightness of the stone shining all the way to Anathema’s eyes, reflecting in her glasses like baby suns. “Is that it?”

Bit underwhelming, and overwhelming, all at once. “Did it work?”

“I - I think so.” She’s biting down what looks to be a smile. “Show what doesn’t belong here,” she says to the stone, almost intimately.

The stone seems to tug, in her hand, and swing closer to Crowley almost like it’s getting dragged in by his gravity. The glow gets brighter, bright enough to sting Crowley’s eyes even shielded behind the sunglasses. He looks slightly to the side of it, to get the glare to stop hitting so much.

She giggles, a short giddy noise, then says “thank you,” and the stone stills in her hand, dulling back to a gentle night-light esque glow. 

She says something else to the stone - amulet, he guesses, it should be called now, maybe - and then the stone gets dimmer yet. “Lead us to what doesn’t belong here.”

Now the stone is tugging, hovering past her hands, pointing north-west. 

She looks at him, severe, and he wonders if it’s pointing toward Aziraphale. Or the thing that took them from the car.

Maybe both. And isn’t that a thought.

“Hey, you two!” A man is running up, sweating lightly on his shaved head, and concernedly bent brows, before slowing as he reaches them. He’s clearly trying not to pant loud enough to be heard. 

A much scrawnier man quickly joins them, his glasses skewed near falling off his face until he pushes them back into place (at which point Crowley instinctively mirrors the action, and readjusts his own glasses too - just in case). “You two were in the tunnel! Are you alright?” a mildly posh accent inquires.

“You were killing people there,” Crowley states.

“Ahh, yes.” 

While Crowley thinks there’s a marginal chance this young man is also from their universe, based on the more familiar accent alone - its highly probable this is just some inhabitant of the big city they’re stuck in. He’s a bit odd, sort of seems off - like everything else here - so Crowley figures it’s not worth bothering to figure out if he ought to help.

“Listen, we wanted to check if you were okay,” the other man says, voice warm and if Crowley trusted, then it’d be the kind of voice he’d want to take comfort from. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of person Crowley is. “When we swept the cavern before going in to take care of the demons, there wasn’t anyone in there. We were surprised as hell when we saw you guys stuck down there.”

“We’re so glad you got out alright. When I worked the banishment spell, I didn’t know for sure if -” at this, the british man looks at Crowley quite awkwardly, staring,“if it would affect anyone besides the intended targets.”

What a polite way to dodge around using the word ‘demon’. 

Crowley felt himself swinging slightly behind Anathema - not that she deserved to take the job of shield. But magic? Another witch? Ahh, he was better off ending the situation sooner rather than later.

“Why were you guys down there? Did they kidnap you?” the warm man asks, and he seems like heroism personified. 

Crowley feels like he’s in an action movie, a little. Since when do heroes come out of the woodwork, anyway? And since when do they bother to stop and actually check in on the saved damsel’s emotional states - at least in the typical Hollywood flicks? And anyways, who -

Anathema either has no sense of suspicion, or just is falling hook line and sinker for the handsome hero. “We just woke up there! Isn’t that odd? Like, I was in Cardiff, picking up some things, and then suddenly, wham! I’m here in an LA sewer or something!” 

“Must’ve been magic,” the british one starts, just as Anathema is exclaiming the same thing. 

“Exactly,” she adds, as if she must get the final word in, or else something ominous might overcome them. 

The hero nods, clearly less capable of rolling fast paced into all this new information than his companion. “So, you’re not from here?” 

Well yes, Crowley is quite sure Anathema already spelled that out quite clearly.

“I told you something was off about them,” the british one pipes up, almost conspiratorial, invading the hero’s space. As if he belongs there, and is a frequent visitor, and plans to put down roots. 

Crowley wonders if he looks like that around Aziraphale. And like Crowley around Aziraphale, the british man also catches himself getting awful close, and readjusts to a more ‘proper’ distance. Not that any amount of compensating will be able to negate the prior indiscretion. 

It is then that the whole lot of them make the mistake of drifting too far into the shadows of the tall buildings, the sun rays blocked in their spot by an alley they’re stood in. All just because Anathema, and the hero, had to side-step out of the way of other individuals walking on the sidewalk.

This blunder allowed the vampire, somehow, to get to them again. (It must just be direct sunlight, then, that vaporizes this particular one). Because the vampire - clearly the same guy as in the tunnel, and in the store, but sans a wrinkly fanged expression at the moment - runs up at about that point.

The two human men couldn’t care less, and the vampire ends up leaning against the thinner one in a way that signals they’re clearly comrades. 

Anathema must not recognize the monster, because she simply smiles gloriously. “Hello! Ah, you’re, with them?”

The monster nods, his face looking deceivingly human (and quite neanderthal in Crowley’s opinion).

“Well, ah, as I was saying. We’re from another universe, I think. Because my phone and credit card don’t work, when they obviously should, and -”

“And it’s the wrong place. Someone brought us here.”

“Or something,” Anathema adds. 

The vampire’s eyes narrow, and the human he’s leaning against seems to mirror the monster’s own shifting expression. “You’re a demon,” the vampire states, frank as anything.

Crowley could react a myriad of ways, but what seems best is to finally remember to step a little in front of his human companion. Just in case the vampire’s hungry - he probably should’ve done that sooner. “Well, you’re a vampire.”

All the humans in the alley are blinking a bit blankly, and it’s not Crowley’s job to figure out how they’re feeling about it all.

Then the strange group of this-universe all seem to move at once, and on instinct Crowley’d be inclined to interpret it as threatening. Anathema jumps a bit, just as he jerks a bit back, and then they’re both closer to a building wall than they ought to be.

The vampire takes the lead, and that’s just more upsetting to be honest. “It’s alright -” he’s talking to Anathema, so apparently, fuck Crowley, “I’m Angel. I don’t hurt people.”

“Right,” Crowley’s heard better lies from Hastur. And Hastur’s dull as a doorknob. 

“I don’t -” now he’s glaring at Crowley, “I - I save them.” Then he’s looking back to Anathema, like Crowley’s chop liver - and what kind of bloody ego must the bastard have, to be calling himself ‘Angel’ anyway? 

The monster reaches out toward Anathema, and Crowley fights the urge to hiss. Damn stupid it was, to back closer to the wall, farther from a possible escape. 

“I don’t know what he did to you, or if you’re from somewhere else. But I could help you get back home.” 

Crowley spits in the guy’s general direction - and it nearly hits the dude’s stretched out hand - because, well, the _nerve_. Like naming yourself Angel gives you a free pass to act all holier than thou. “We’re good, thanks,” and then Crowley is determinedly spinning, placing a few fingers to nudge at Anathema’s arm to get her to move, and pointedly trying to lead them back out the way they came.

Anathema follows, so at least, she isn’t buying this guy’s sob story. Crowley hopes the bastard doesn’t grab him as they try to walk past. 

The vampire doesn’t - but the hero, all jovial earlier, places his wide frame right in front of their path. So the humans are the vampire's extra muscle. Intimidation, but indirect. Rude.

“She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Crowley just has to gape for a second, eyes wide behind his glasses.

“I can decide that for myself, thanks.” Anathema’s hand snakes it’s way into his, and tugs him along. 

Then they’re on the street again, full of options to escape, and Crowley throws out a hand shouting “Cab!” 

It feels like an arrow, shooting up the nerves of his arms, but he manages to get reality to line up just right, for just the most _convenient_ car to slide up to the curb. Anathema climbs right on in, and so does he.

\---

They get themselves a hotel room with Crowley’s credit card, and that’s another 200 bucks down the drain. Apparently, it was half price too. This city’s expensive. There are two beds, though. And as far as hotel room quality goes, the sheets look nice and clean, the walls look tan and quite suburbanly decorated (despite the fact they’re somewhere in the downtown). The hotel includes a valet - which, while they have no car yet, Crowley’s eager to acquire one as soon as opportunity allows. It looks perfectly nice, perfectly fine, and if they’d been on holiday instead of forcibly displaced, it might even have been the kind of place Crowley and Aziraphale might have chosen to compromise on (if a more luxurious place were too impossible to discreetly magic a sudden vacancy at). 

Anathema does some sort of odd rituals with the amulet she made, and it takes her an hour before she even brings up that he’d been called a demon.

“So uh, that guy was really a vampire?” 

Crowley’s sprawled on the bed closest to the window, thoroughly sunken into the mattress, staring out at the sky. “Yeah. Can tell.”

She nods, as if that settles it. “Now that we’re here, well, my abilities are a bit off. So it’s kind of hard for me to pinpoint that kind of stuff.”

Crowley nods distractedly back, trying to be sociable.

“Not that I’ve ever met a vampire, I don’t think.” Anathema’s amulet is glowing, and drifting toward the window, so she stands up and lets it lead her. Then pulls out her phone, some kind of app opened up, and screenshots what’s displayed there. “But um. He felt pretty human to me. Like, evilish? But also like he definitely had a soul. A lot like - well, Adam? If you’ve ever met him?”

“Yeah, Adam. Nice kid.”

She smiled. “Yeah, he is. And you were there. Sorry - it’s hard to keep all those details straight. For some reason.” She sounded like she was about to start drifting quietly to herself again, instead of bothering to keep him in the conversation.

“Except, of course, that vampire felt way - um - smaller.” Thankfully for Anathema, she didn’t have to elaborate that she meant his aura and not actually the physical size. Since, of course, Adam was a child, and this man had clearly been a grown up.

The room had gotten quiet again, so she’d spoken to her amulet some more. 

Crowley had felt like drifting off - he was useless to her, right now, and sleep always made bad situations feel bad, well, later. Rather than forcing him to endure them in the now. 

“So, you’re a demon?” 

Her amulet was glowing happily, brightening, hovering straight out away from her, pointing directly into the west side of the city. 

Crowley opened his eyes, not that she could tell. “Yep.”

“What’s that like?” Anathema took another screenshot on her phone, Crowley could hear several sudden clicks. “I mean, I’m sorry. I mean - you aren’t the reason we’re here, though?” 

That was the important point, anyway. “No, unfortunately. If I was, we could’ve fixed this up by lunch and been back on our merry way.” 

She continued to quietly tap away at her phone, holding her amulet’s string, pointedly not looking over at Crowley.

“Not that you’re in any danger,” he finally thought to add. “I’m retired, I guess you could say.”

“Well, also, I think you helped with the apocalypse too, right?”

He sat up, and she jumped, but hopefully not because of that.

“I mean you helped to stop it, right?”

Really, he more like just survived it, while maybe attempting to do something right. “Sort of.”

“Well then, I’m sure you’re fine.” Even though she said it, she wasn’t looking at him, still focused on her necklace. But he could hear a smile still in her voice. “Just like Adam.”

Crowley decided he needed to get some air. 

\---

The bloody vampire showed up again - not actually covered in blood, though. With his two human sidekicks. They kept insisting to Anathema, through the door she refused to open for them (because she’d heard the story vampires have to be invited in - although, technically, the rules for shared spaces like hotels were a bit unclear), that they’d like to be of help.

They wore her down, while Crowley was down the block, perusing a used car lot, trying to find something decent. While also strategically ducking every time a salesman got an inkling to try to notice him.

Back at the hotel, Anathema had been convinced that these gentlemen could be quite useful - and their magic and resources in this realm quite the advantage. Also, the slim man was a bit charming. If only because he looked a bit dorky, and his glasses looked a bit like a shield to hide behind, and he talked around like he was almost timid but fighting through it. And it all struck the chords of her heart in the way only someone unexpectedly familiar to old fond memories could. 

She wasn’t with Newton anymore, romantically. But he’d been very sweet, and fasincating in his own way to her, and they’d left each other on pleasant terms. He’d been the one to help push her to burn the future - conceptually, that is. He’d helped her by being there when she let go. 

When she said goodbye to destiny, to being stuck in it’s tracks fitting into all that it was and promised for her to be. Prisoned her to be. That kind of gesture doesn’t get remembered without at least a bit of fondness.

A bit of gratitude, that makes her feel warm in it’s own way. So this man, who strikes her just a touch in his familiarity, with Newton, makes her want to feel safe again. Like that summer, after That Day, when the world didn’t end, and her future became free.

It’s hard not to give into trusting them all, just a little, with an omen like that trapezing all around the place.

Angel seemed nice enough - he hadn’t eaten her, after all. Hadn’t eaten his companions either, clearly. And they weren’t acting like that minion of Dracula in the films always did, blathering wildly and eating bugs - so that, probably, had to mean they’d chosen to work together of their own free will. Hopefully.

Crowley wasn’t too happy when he got back.

Mostly because the two humans tried to splash some water from a bottle at him, and he lept in the air like an outraged cat, before falling rather unsmoothly back out the hotel room door. 

“Do you mind?” she’d heard him shout, from the other side of the door, likely leaning against the wood as a barrier.

“He’s with me.” Anathema looked at them firmly, “Whatever you’re doing, you’ll stop.” She reached out, pretending she had any right at all to be giving orders, and took the bottle firmly from the hand of the one who’d introduced himself to her as Charles Gunn. (Though he preferred to be called just ‘Gunn,’ unless it was the british man addressing him, as far as Anathema could tell.) “If you’re going to help me, you’ll help him too. Is that okay with all of you?”

She pushed her glasses more firmly on, and leveled what she hoped was a glare at the vampire. At the leader. “Well, is it?”

A beat, where she could hear the demon outside swearing under his breath. Then, “Yeah, it’s clear. If you say he’s good, we believe you.”

The vampire’s friends seemed less certain about that.

Outside in the hall, Anathema could’ve sworn she heard the demon grumble, “‘m not _good_.”

\---

Some horrible duration later, Aziraphale was being lugged out of a car trunk, the radio curtly cutting off to ominous quiet. His legs had gone numb, and parts of his arms, and he - at least - felt the right amount of heavy again, even if it meant his kidnappers ended up dropping his body like led weight to the ground, the instant they managed to clear the edge of the trunk.

It made the needles of sleep in his limbs buzz uncomfortably. He was about ready to start screaming again.

In fact, he did.

His voice was echoing off of concrete, fading off into a hushed background noise that might be the hum of never-ending traffic in a busy city. 

Someone’s gritty hand touched his face - and it was awful - and then what felt like it might have been a suit tie, was slipping between his lips and being secured awfully tight against the back of his head. He kept shouting, but it was nothing more than a muffled ruckus of indistinct sounds now.

His captors were moving him, and he tried to play dead, hoping his weight would hinder them even if it might not completely stop their endeavor.

Aziraphale could tell they were going indoors somewhere, and it still sounded like his sounds of protestation, and their footsteps, were bouncing against concrete or stone. Something solid anyway.

An overwhelming feeling washed over him and he had to wonder if this was what claustrophobia might be like. He wished it would stop. It kept feeling closer, tighter, like a vice all around him in the blankness of being unable to see, in the numbness of being too restricted to move. 

His muffled grunts and shouts just added to the omnipresent tightness of it all. What he wouldn’t give, to scream again, as loud as he possibly could.

A large portion of him, the one managing to side step the growing worry, was getting very fed up. Angry, as it were. Maybe it was just Aziraphale disconnecting from the source of fear, but truly, he wanted to knock his kidnappers the hell out. 

Wanted to punch them and kick them away and into a wall, huff a loud scold they’d be sure to remember (even though they’d be unconscious), and then storm off beautifully. It was a nice daydream, to be moving and thrashing out so much, when here he was unable to move.

He could tell this was a bad situation. He’d contemplated teleporting himself away already, but the thought of Heaven catching wind of the motion, and intercepting him to something altogether eons more horrifying. Well.

Aziraphale was wondering if it might be worth it, anyway.

But no - no! - that was a foolish thought! Nothing some humans (probably humans) could do to him would be as bad as _that_. Hell, even demons (if these people were demons), couldn’t possibly do that much damage - at worst, he might even be able to terrify them right back to where they came from. 

Well perhaps _worst_ case could be far worse than that. But if they were demons, surely Crowley could come to his rescue more easily than if it were the angels. Where _was_ Crowley? He’d been driving that _awful_ car - but the car hadn’t been all that awful, had it? No, not with Crowley steering it, grinning softly like sunny skies on a lovely day, rambling about things they might do together - 

Aziraphale’s panic resumed its takeover of his body, renewed by new things to fret and worry over and grow in the space of his currently cut off system. 

He pushed it down. Not right now, no. He didn’t need it right now. 

The captors placed him on the ground, and one tugged him up until he was balanced on his knees. He felt another pair of hands securing what might’ve been chains to his arms, then some loud clanking like they were attaching to something else as well.

Aziraphale felt the warmth of fire nearby, gentle and controlled. When one of the captors ripped off his blindfold, the light was dim enough not to hurt. He adjusted right away.

He was furious. 

Yes, these people were clearly human. Their grubby dirty faces, their very fleshy, very mortal scent, merging in just dandy with the heavy musk of the wet air. In silly red robes, also grubby, clearly not being sent to the cleaners on a regular basis. 

One of them had a knife - ceremonial and in what would be another circumstance, quite old and lovely, but right now it was just a bit of an _annoyance_ \- and Aziraphale frowned rather severely. Leveling what might have been a quite judgmental scowl. 

Really, planning to kill him, and they had to be doing it here? In what looked like a sewer, wearing those? They couldn’t even take the time to invest the money and effort into a decent ritual, something more honorably considerate seeing how it was to involve an _angel_? Did they… did they not know who they’d kidnapped?

And why on Earth had they kidnapped him. The last thing he could remember before all this, he’d simply been in the car. Then that loud pop. 

One of the captors spoke. The language was English. “This one will have to do, he has the power.” It sounded American.

Sort of like those surfers in those teenage romantic comedies from the 90s. Aziraphale would not have been shocked to hear the man wail out ‘radical, dude!’ at the sight of a stabbing. 

He had been content to silently judge, but in the end, he wasn’t going to change the situation without doing something. So he _tried_ to say “Excuse me, what do you imbeciles think you’re doing with me here?” 

But all that came out were rather huffy muffled noises, restricted by the tie in his mouth - which tasted rather dusty - they couldn’t even bother to use a new, clean, tie when they gagged him. 

The other captor, face hidden deep inside the ridiculous red cloak draping over his head, reached out with the hand not busy holding a knife, and tugged roughly until the tie finally slipped down. It was shoved - by nails Aziraphale could clearly see mud under - until it was hanging more loosely around Aziraphale’s neck.

“You are deranged!” 

Immediately, that same offending hand thrashed up to cover his mouth tightly. 

Aziraphale was indignant. 

“Why’d you do that?” the maybe-surfer dude asked.

“I thought it would be best to give the creature a chance to speak it’s last words before it dies.”

‘I don’t die, you fools,’ Aziraphale mildly considered shouting. But thought better of it. No need to provoke the idiots with a knife. 

It was then that Aziraphale noticed something painted on the ground, and my wasn’t that a concern. It looked awfully similar to an intricacy he’d drawn himself before, to call to God - although a little different, a bit altered, clearly being repurposed to serve a different end. But, still. 

Oh dear.

Aziraphale wasn’t quite IN the symbol, his toesies managed to still be situated outside of it. But the knife man clearly intended to stab him then shove him into the center of it all. God knows where it would send him, or what it would do. This was no good at all.

“I do have a few last words!” Aziraphale shouted, trying to get his words past the dirty hand clasped against his face.

The two humans looked upon him curiously. Hesitantly, the knife man lowered his offending hand.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale bit out, mainly out of habit. 

They stared. 

Aziraphale tried his best to look back, rather than letting his eyes drift ominously to the dagger. “Well then,” he started. “I should like to know why you people have kidnapped me, for a start.”

He hoped he sounded brave. He tried to pretend he was Crowley. Crowley would be brave. Wouldn’t give the slightest bit of a damn. Cool as a cucumber. Wily as a snake. ‘Be wily’, Aziraphale thought to himself. Hopeless about what that might actually mean in practicality. 

He stared them down, trying his best impression of Gabriel’s arrogance. 

Something seemed to work. The man with a voice like he was permanently relaxing at a beach perked up, eyes inside the shade of the hood widening like an owl’s. “Give strength to our god.”

“Your god?” Aziraphale wondered who in creation that could possibly be. Nevermind, it didn’t matter. “Look - who do you think you nabbed, gentlemen?”

The man with the knife was solemn, as if speaking honorably before a rite, in some holy space. “A being with power that our god may use and be nourished with.”

“Do you happen to know what kind of being, sir?” 

At this, the surfer dude’s head shook instinctively, belying his hesitancies, his concerns - clearly he was not the expert here, but the novice. 

Aziraphale seized on it. “And you, are you prepared to kill an innocent man? Are you prepared to be a murderer? Because it seems to me like that’s what you’re gearing up to - get done.”

He supposed that it was possible they didn’t intend to actually kill him. But he’d seen enough true crime documentaries to fret over the very real possibility that after all the bad they’d already done to him, they might want to get rid of him just so no one rats them out. 

Something was working. The novice leaned back a bit - on his own knees as well, although not tied up like Aziraphale - and the angel thought perhaps, the man was coming back to the reality of his situation. That perhaps he hadn’t really thought through what all this meant.

Maybe that was just Aziraphale’s hopes, deluding himself into trying to see the best in humanity. 

“We don’t intend to kill you now,” said the knife man.

He leaned forward, and Aziraphale gasped when the bastard suddenly sliced open one of Aziraphale’s bound up forearms. The blood drizzled out bright red, hot and wet.

“At least, not until we’ve done as much with you as is possible to help our god. I imagine you will be quite useful, while you last.”

“What kind of god needs help?!” Aziraphale couldn’t really focus on anything but the blood, flowing casually down his arm, sliding across his fingers as it made its way toward the ground. And that symbol on the floor.

He was going to have to do something soon. Perhaps say something clever, or magic a hand free, or -

But he didn’t really get the chance to contemplate further on the possibilities.

Some drops of his blood had made it to the ground, to the symbol, and it was suddenly glowing. Quite brightly.

Blindingly, one might say.

In the sudden change, Aziraphale pushed his torso forward as far as it would go, and managed to knock over one of the men - the one with the knife, Aziraphale thinks.

Then there’s a yelp, and a crashing noise - that Aziraphale’s pretty sure he didn’t cause - and the surfer dude is far enough from the blinding symbol to observe.

Aziraphale’s scrambling backwards again, because he doesn’t want to find out what happens if he falls all the way into the symbol and gets completely engulfed. It’s glowing a lot, and it seems like the longer Aziraphale’s in it, the brighter it gets.

The man with the knife has fallen, fully inside the symbol on the ground, and he’s screaming.

There’s a brightness away from the floor too, and Aziraphale thinks it’s the surfer dude throwing a torch at them - who knows why - before the guy is taking off, dashing away. 

The flames on their stick roll closer until they hit the symbol on the floor now too - and it’s like the drawn lines are filling up with _his_ blood - and the blood suddenly catches fire like it’s made of oil, once the torch touches it.

Aziraphale yelps, trying to get to his feet - which is quite hard, with these chains going from his arms to two metal loops stuck in the ground - so he’s hunched over, dreading the prospect of getting burned up imminently, when the material of the ropes upon him light up.

It’s like his blood has turned to oil, inside this symbol. Like the ropes have got oil on them as well, because they’re torching rather fast, and Aziraphale decides to speed up the process. Focuses in on the fiery bounds, so they incinerate instantaneously, and then they’re just dust - harmless and falling down to the ground.

Aziraphale backs up, so as much of himself is outside of the bright symbol on the floor as possible. He tries to still the bleeding cut on his arm, by pressing it against his stomach as much as he can contort to.

In the overwhelming brightness right in front of him, it’s hard to see, but his body seems a touch _off,_ somehow. 

“Aziraphale!”

That voice. Aziraphale looks to it like a magnet condemned to always pull to what it’s made for, and Crowley’s rushing up, hands upon him, and Aziraphale knows without being able to see very much at the moment, that the demon’s eyes must surely be welled to the brim. 

Aziraphale wants to breath back Crowley’s name in kind, but it’s getting hard to draw in air - the symbol, and perhaps other instigators, have caused the flames in the room to grow, and it’s quite hot and bright and smoky. Aziraphale can barely manage to keep from coughing.

“The man - knife - maybe he has a key -” Aziraphale forces out, through the heat and smoke, as Crowley’s head swerves, identifying the chains with worry. 

Crowley’s on the same page, diving into the space of the symbol - and Aziraphale reaches out, to grab the back of the demon’s shirt, to keep some of him outside of that symbol, just in case - and Crowley’s pushing the wailing guy over, rummaging through his pockets, then triumphantly pulling out a key.

It isn’t until later that Aziraphale takes the time to wonder why Crowley doesn’t just magic the chains away. 

Then Crowley’s at Aziraphale’s feet, rushing to undo the clunky padlocks keeping Aziraphale stuck. 

In the background haze of light and smoke, Aziraphale can hear noise, shouting. Like there’s others, somewhere.

That bloody fool with the knife is still screaming on the ground. Maybe he’s enjoying the pleasure of speaking to his god. It can be like that, sometimes, maybe. 

Aziraphale helpfully takes the key from Crowley’s hand once the chains aren’t stuck in the ground anymore, resolving to get them fully off of his arms later once they’ve cleared the more immediate disaster. He wants to hug the demon.

But Crowley is dragging him rather harshly by the sleeve and meat of his arm, back toward the cacophony of sound. Aziraphale follows.

\---

If it should concern anyone, then for better or worse, let it be known that the knife man did not die. He did, in fact, see into the face of his god.

His god didn’t particularly like him.

But then, how often does meeting one’s god go well?

Mostly, he heard the ringing pitches of a language humans can’t parse out properly, that gave him quite the migraine. The parts he thought he could make out, were rather upsetting. They were about how the pretentious act he was putting on fooled no one, and how she certainly didn’t love him - nor did she plan to love any human - and to loose her ‘number,’ so to speak.

She had, in particular to this human, thought him quite dead. And she was not pleased to find him both alive, and still bugging her. She must have words with people she found far more tolerable, later, about this disappointment. Human people, who may give him more time of day. But only to get upset over the fact that he had somehow escaped, that he had somehow survived their justice the last time. 

If the knife man had known what was good for him, he might have taken it all as a sign to leave. To get as far away as he could. Then go farther still.

He was far luckier than he realized - when he finally pulled himself out of the ceremonial circle, when the blood finally burned out - that the denizens of LA that had come to help rescue his captive, had not stumbled upon him when he had been screaming on the ground.

He was far luckier than he _deserved_ , when he dragged himself outside of the tunnel, to find the man named Travis who’d been helping him, standing there waiting, with a metal vase in hand. Travis smashed him over the head with said vase.

(Travis rode off, on a skateboard he’d stowed in the backseat of the car used to transport Aziraphale. Travis needed to report back to the rest of the cult, maybe. Either way, he hadn’t met the god yet. He didn’t know it was all going to go bottoms up. She didn’t want him either, or any of them.) 

When the man who’d had the knife awakened, he found he could not remember who he was, or why he found himself next to a stagnant pond with mosquitoes biting at his face. His name was Knox, not that he knew it.

If he stayed in town much longer, his god was going to squish him like a bug.

Hopefully, he forgot her.  


\---  


Six hours ago they were speeding through Cardiff in a car that just wasn’t the right fit. Now they were sat on a bed, in a decent enough choice of a hotel, with Aziraphale practically glued to Crowley’s side as the angel made disapproving looks at the group of strangers.

Except Anathema, of whom the angel had rather quickly recognized, and thrown a “Hello dear! How nice to see you - I mean, it’s not nice you’re stuck here too. But, well, it's a pleasure to run into you all the same.”

She had just smiled politely, her eyes sort of glazed. She was trying to place the angel and coming up just a touch too short. Aziraphale kept right on grinning at her, before finally resuming his mental smiting of the others. At the point he finally looked away, Crowley noticed Anathema blink and shake her head suddenly. She’d finally remembered Aziraphale hitting her with the car too.

A little belatedly, perhaps she remembered that Aziraphale had been present at the end of the world That Day, as well. 

“Well, while it’s quite nice of you to have aided my companion in my rescue -” Aziraphale pressed his side further against Crowley, as if in emphasis, “I would like to know why you chose to do so.” 

The angel continued to glare right through the vampire, expression set like stone, expectant and demanding. Aziraphale always looked a little demanding to Crowley, though. At least, when he was looking at Crowley. 

Demanding in just the sort of way that got Crowley to cave, and acquiesce to whatever it was the angel wished. Reluctantly, of course. 

Definitely, only, after putting up an admirable resistance (which Crowley did not realize fooled absolutely, positively, no one ever). 

“Excuse me -”

“You’re excused. Now answer the question.” 

The vampire looked a little overwhelmed. Anathema spoke up helpfully, next to said vampire. “He’s an angel.”

The trio of fools Aziraphale didn’t know the names of yet, shifted until they were all at least side eyeing her. “Not like you - not a name, I mean. He’s just an angel. Uh, I think.”

Aziraphale gave a nod. Before actually remembering he ought to be more careful about considering who he releases that admission to. 

Although, to be fair, there was a small nagging inside his own private mind, that did wonder. He had gone against Heaven, after all. How long was he going to even remain a creature of said realm. Aziraphale supposed, hopefully a decent while longer, seeing as him being stationed on Earth for so very long had never affected his status. Even though it _had_ exposed him to humanity, and it’s many habits, for far longer than he’d recently been exposed to anything remotely angelic - besides his own self, of course.

Aziraphale sort of wanted to intertwine his fingers with Crowley now. Hold his hand, ground himself. Return to what is assuredly the most natural state he has, on his own side. On their side. No room for doubt, when doing that.

He remembers, there’s no reason not to reach out and grasp Crowley’s hand. Not anymore. No reason ever again.

And so he does.


End file.
